Myanmar Struggles to Put Down Buddhist Attack on Muslims

Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters

A police officer outside a mosque that was set on fire in the northern city of Lashio, the latest outbreak of religious violence in Myanmar.

By THOMAS FULLER-May 29, 2013

BANGKOK — Security forces on Wednesday struggled to bring peace to a northern city in Myanmar after Buddhist mobs set fire to a mosque, a Muslim school and shops, the latest outbreak of religious violence in Myanmar and a sign that radical strains of Buddhism may be spreading to a wider area of the country.

The violence afflicting the city, Lashio, in the north near the border with China, is hundreds of miles from towns and villages affected by religious violence this year.

One Muslim man was killed and four Buddhists were wounded in the clashes, said U Wai Lin, an official with the Information Ministry in Lashio.

U Khun Zaw Oo, a freelance photographer reached by telephone in Lashio, said mobs of young men on motorcycles roamed the city with swords and metal rods.

“They are riding around neighborhoods and destroying,” he said.

Witnesses said Muslims had fled the city. A movie theater and Muslim shops were destroyed Wednesday, according to U Myo Myint, a member of the National League for Democracy, a political party, who witnessed the violence.

The burning of the mosque and other buildings took place on Tuesday evening and followed a pattern seen elsewhere in Myanmar of the police and military units’ being unwilling or unable to disperse angry crowds of Buddhists.

Lauri Nio, a student from Finland visiting Lashio, said the first police units arrived two hours after groups of men set fire to the mosque and began destroying shops. The police stayed for only a few minutes, he said, and when a larger contingent of police and military units returned later in the night, they closed off the streets but did not confront the rioters.

Groups of men gathered in the market “shouting, cheering and singing Burmese nationalist songs” as they destroyed shops, he said.

Video from the city posted on Facebook on Wednesday by the Democratic Voice of Burma, a Myanmar online news service, showed what now have become familiar scenes in the country of burned-out buildings and charred motorcycles.

As with previous bouts of violence in central Myanmar, journalists were singled out.

“They hit me on the head with a metal rod,” Mr. Khun Zaw Oo said. The mobs also removed and destroyed memory cards from his camera, he said.

Like a rampage in March in the central city of Meiktila, the violence in Lashio appeared to have been touched off by a relatively minor quarrel. State television said a Buddhist woman selling gasoline was attacked by a Muslim customer, who was later detained by the police.

Buddhist mobs surrounded the police station where the man was being held and reacted with fury when the police did not hand him over. Details of the quarrel could not be confirmed.

Ye Htut, a government spokesman, said the crowd outside the police station in Lashio included 80 Buddhist monks. The police opened fire on Wednesday to try to quell the violence, Mr. Ye Htut said.

Earlier on Wednesday, he said the authorities and religious and civic organizations in Lashio had been “cooperating with each other to avoid further violence in the city.”

At least 44 people have died since March, when Buddhist mobs rampaged through Meiktila, violence that followed a dispute in a gold shop between a Muslim proprietor and Buddhist customers. Most of the victims in Meiktila were Muslims.

Muslims make up about 5 percent of the population in Myanmar, but their presence is visible in nearly every large town and city.

The violence of recent months has strained Myanmar’s relations with Muslim countries and has underlined questions about the ability of its government, which is overwhelmingly staffed by Buddhists from the Burman ethnic group, to maintain long-term peace and stability among the country’s many other ethnic and religious groups.

Wai Moe contributed reporting from Yangon, Myanmar.